LL-L 'Delectables' 2006.07.13 (08) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 13 July 2006 * Volume 08
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From: Heather Rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com> 
Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.07.13 (06) [E]

Vlad wrote: _Hollander_: just a hollander roll. As used in paper
manufacturing.<

There is also 'Hollands' in English = the very best gin! The one that
comes in the tall brown earthenware bottle.

Also known as Genever < from juniper? rather than anything to do with
Geneva ????

Heather

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From: 'Global Moose Translations' <globalmoose at t-online.de> 
Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.07.13 (06) [E]

Obiter Dictum wrote:
>_Hollandskij syr_ (Hollandse kaas) : Not necessarily directly from Edam, as
is
>easy to guess. Can be fermented and formed into cute red-waxed balls at
Ivanovka
>Dairy Farm (hmmm, a Hollaenderei! :) ), 16 miles southeast of Moscow.

This is something I have been meaning to ask for a while. We all know about
all the various famous and delicious Dutch and Danish cheeses, and there are
also all kinds of excellent British cheeses (Cheddar and Stilton only being
the top of the iceberg). What about Lower Saxony, then? What about East
Frisia, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg? The only Northern German cheeses
that I can think of are Harzkäse, which is almost non-fat, rubbery and
extremely stinky (dogs love it as a treat), and Kochkäse, which is a bit
like cream cheese gone bad, with a soft texture, but also rubbery and very
stinky.

That can't be all? With all the dairy cattle in the German Lowlands, why
haven't we been able to come up with any decent cheeses, like all of our
neighbours? Shouldn't the art and culture of cheese-making be much more
evenly spread about the region, with all those common roots that exist? What
went wrong? Why and when did we decide to specialise in sausages instead?

Gabriele Kahn

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Delectables

Gabriele,

I think a quasi-North-German type of cheese is Tilsit (or Tilsiter) cheese. It
has a creamy color and small holes (or bubbles) and is relatively moist.  It has
a creamy (semi-soft) texture and creamy flavor, and some say it smells
above-average strong.

Its place of origin is Tilsit, which is the German name of an East Prussian town
known in Lithuanian as Tilžė and since Soviet takeover (> Kaliningrad) as Sovetsk
(Советск) in Russian.

Apparently, this sort of cheese production was introduced to the area by Swiss
immigrant dairy farmers in the mid-19th century.  Since the area had at one time
been held by Sweden and maintained some ties with Sweden, this sort of cheese
became very popular in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.  Swedish and Finnish
ones are excellent and are exported.  My favorites are the Swedish brand Ambrosia
and the Finnish brand Turunmaa (="Turku Land," tradionally Swedish-speaking
Ã
boland of Southwestern Finland).  I like these better than the German brands.  I
believe that Danish Havarti belongs to the same school of cheese making.

An apparently truly North German cheese -- and, boy! it's at least as "special"
as Harzerkäse -- come to us from lovely Saxony-Anhalt, previously east of the
Iron Curtain, just east of your stomping ground, Gabriele.  

To tell you the truth, I'm not really chewing at the bits to get to try this one,
because both the name and the description sound pretty gross: LS
_Spinn(en)kees'_, G _Spinnenkäse_, literally "spider cheese."  Its more correct
but not popular name LS _Milbenkees'_, G _Milbenkäse_, literally "mite cheese,"
doesn't sound all that much more inviting, I think.  It has a relative in Oviedo
(Asturian _Uviéu_), Spain.

Spinnenkäse, known since the Middle Ages, is made from quark flavored with salt
and caraway, formed into small balls or cylinders, then dried.  Then it is stored
in wooden boxes inhabited by colonies of a sort mite (_Tyroglyphus casei L._,
"spider mite"?) which is fed with rye flour and, inhabits the cheese and graces
it with its excrement, thereby causing fermentation.  The rind turns dark yellow
after one month, dark red after three months, and, if left for a year, it turns
black.  The inside and the flavor are similar to that of Harzerkäse, thus a bit
gelatinous, but it tastes a little more bitter.  The special twist is that you
consume the remaining dead and live mites with the cheese.  (Oh, lekker! Bring
the kids! They'll just love this.)  It's a slightly more than local delicacy,
conveniently tolerated by the health authorities despite a general ban on live
animals in foodstuff.

This would not go over well in Eastern Asia where traditionally people are
grossed out by the Western foodstuff cheese, many of them even by milk (since it
seems unnatural for adults to consume milk, leave alone that of another species).
 In my book, it beats Chinese fermented tofu (臭豆è
 _chòu dòufu_ "stinky tofu"),
Chairman Mao's favorite.  However, Japanese people have meanwile gotten into it
via a cheese-eating fashion and very bland プロセッス　チーズ (_purosessu chīzu_
"processed cheese") in the early 1970s or so (when I was offered cheese wrapped
in sheets of seeweed (nori æµ·è‹”), which was better than plain Velveta).  I
wouldn't even be all that surprised if Spinnenkäse became fashionable in Japan if
the right trend-setter started it.

Guten Appetit!
Reinhard/Ron

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